Chapter Six
Casey
WE’VE SLEPT TOGETHER before. Several times, if anyone’s counting, and I’m not, except that I am, because I’m a person who tracks data even when the data involves a man I married six hours ago.
The first time was after a documentary about financial fraud and a bottle of wine, in this penthouse, and I told him I was staying because I wanted to and not because it was late. I drove home in the morning in yesterday’s clothes and didn’t have a conversation about it.
The next time, I stayed longer. Then I brought a toothbrush and left it in his bathroom while pretending that wasn’t a declaration.
Then we argued about the toothbrush, which was actually about whether I was moving in, which was actually about whether I trusted him enough to need him, and we ended the argument badly and then made up well.
Tonight is different though maybe neither of us expected it to be. It’s our wedding night. It means more.
I brush my teeth with the toothbrush that started a negotiation and look at myself in the mirror.
The cream dress is off, my hair is down, and my mascara is slightly smudged from the hug Marnie gave me outside the courthouse that lasted longer than Marnie hugs usually last. I look like I got married this morning and hasn’t entirely processed it.
I still look like myself too, which is reassuring.
The penthouse is dark except for Charlotte through the windows.
He finds me in the hallway, staring out the panoramic windows.
He’s taken off his jacket, loosened his tie, and undone the top button.
He looks at me and then catches himself looking, which is absurd because we’re married, and he’s allowed.
“Hi,” I say.
“Hi.”
“We’re married.”
He smiles slowly. “We are.”
“That’s insane.” I sound more delighted than worried.
“It’s slightly insane.” He kisses me, and it’s different.
I don’t know how to explain the difference except that he’s paying attention in a way that isn’t careful. Careful implies hesitation. This is the opposite. He’s noting every response. He’s thorough, precise, unhurried, and tonight it turns a lock in me that I don’t have a name for yet.
I pull him toward the bedroom because if I wait for him to make the move, he’ll ask whether I want to. I do, and I’d rather show him than tell him.
The bedroom is dark except for the city through the windows. Sterling doesn’t turn on the light. He’s memorized this room, where the bed is, how many steps from the door, which side I sleep on, and he walks me backward through it without bumping into anything, which shouldn’t be attractive but is.
The sheets are cool against my back. His mouth is on my neck, then my collarbone, then the dip between my breasts, and I arch into it because my body has decided I want this more than anything, and my brain can catch up whenever it’s ready.
He pulls off the slip I wore under the dress I bought this morning with a patience that borders on infuriating.
“You’re going too slowly.”
“I’m going exactly the right speed.”
I squirm when he circles my umbilicus with his tongue. “That’s a matter of opinion.”
“My opinion involves making you say that again in about four minutes.”
I laugh, and then I stop because his mouth has found the spot below my navel that short-circuits my ability to form sentences. He knows it. He takes his time with my folds while I dig my fingers into the sheets and reconsider my position on patience.
He comes back up. I pull his shirt over his head and push down his pants. He kicks them off. Then it’s just us, the ridiculous sheets, his body against mine, and his cock hard against my thigh. I shift my hips until he’s where I want him. “Now.”
He pushes into me slowly, and I’m wet enough that the slide is easy, and I want more of him immediately.
I wrap my legs around him and dig my heels into the backs of his thighs.
He gets the message and starts thrusting.
I move with him. We find the rhythm we’ve found before, but it’s deeper and more intense somehow.
With his mouth on my throat, cling to him.
The difference tonight is that every time I open my eyes, he’s already looking at me.
It isn’t gentleness. It’s attention. He’s studying me while he’s inside me, reading every sound, every shift, and every place my breath changes.
When I tilt my hips, he adjusts. When I pull him deeper, he gives me exactly what I asked for.
Sterling Hollingsford brings the same thorough focus to making love that he brings to an acquisition.
I should probably find that unsettling, but instead, it’s devastating and profoundly satisfying.
He shifts his angle again. I make a sound I haven’t made before, surprised and sharp.
He does it once more, deliberately, hitting the same spot, and the pleasure folds over itself, building faster than I expected.
I dig my nails into his back. He drops his forehead against mine.
His breathing is ragged now as he retains tenuous control, waiting for me, and that restraint makes me want to break him. “Don’t hold back. Let go.”
With a grunt, he drives harder into me. I arch up to meet every stroke.
The bed frame hits the wall once but neither of us cares.
He covers my mouth with his in a frantic kiss.
I bite his lower lip. He groans into my mouth as my orgasm builds low in my belly, coiling tighter with every thrust. When it hits, it hits everywhere.
I lock my thighs around him, bow my back, and make a sound I’d be embarrassed about if I weren’t so enmeshed in pleasure.
I don’t care right now because every nerve I own is firing at once.
He follows me with a sound I’ve never heard from him, low and completely uncontrolled, his whole body shuddering against mine.
He’s the least controlled version of himself I’ve ever seen.
He rests his forehead against my shoulder as he keeps trembling in the aftermath.
His breathing is rough. He’s, for exactly one moment, not managing anything.
I’d like to hold onto that moment, but Sterling recovers quickly.
He doesn’t know how to let go of control for long.
Within a minute, while I’m still wrecked, he’s propped on one elbow, looking at me with an expression that’s half-tender and half-analytical, like he’s already reviewing the data and preparing follow-up questions.
“You’re studying me again.” I sound drowsy.
“I’m not studying you.”
I scoff with a hand wave. “You’re evaluating. I can tell.”
“I’m appreciating.”
I turn to look at him, meeting his gaze. “You’re appreciating with intent. I’ve seen that look over breakfast when you’re reading something you’re about to buy.”
He laughs, and it’s my favorite version of him, the one that breaks through the fastidiousness and proves he can still be surprised by his own laughter.
Once I’m sufficiently recovered, we curl together and lie in the dark. The city glows orange through the windows. I’m on my side facing him, one leg thrown over his, loose and tired but content in a way I haven’t been in a long time. It’s so much more than good sex.
“Are you okay?” he asks, which is a question he asks every time, and I’ve stopped finding it funny, because he means it every time.
“I’m better than okay. I’m married, horizontal, and I don’t have a shift until Thursday. This is my best night in six months.”
“Six months?”
“Six months. Before you, my best night was a Saturday when I paid off the last of my student loans and ate an entire pizza on my couch while watching a documentary about whales. It was excellent. You’re competing with whales.”
He grins, and the movement is ticklish against my forehead. I settle into him, savoring this moment.
“You still have your apartment,” he says after a minute.
“Yeah.” I’m trying not to tense.
“You don’t need to keep it.”
My relaxation is fading, and I’m prepared for an argument though I hope it doesn’t start tonight. “I know I don’t need to keep it.”
“But you’re going to?”
“For now.” I trace a circle on his chest with my finger, absentmindedly. “It’s not about you. It’s about me having a place that’s mine. I’ve had a place that’s mine since I was twenty-two and giving it up because I got married feels like giving up the wrong thing.”
He sounds confused more than hurt. “That makes no sense.”
“It makes complete sense. You have a company. I have a lease. They serve the same function.”
He considers this. His breathing changes, becoming more deliberate. He’s deciding whether to argue with it but relaxes into me instead. He pulls me closer, and I let him, because I’ve won this argument without arguing, at least for tonight.
“My father left when I was twenty-two,” Sterling says. He says it to the ceiling.
I don’t move, because moving would make him stop, and I’ve been waiting for something from this direction since the courthouse. Since the catch in his voice on forsaking.
“He ran the company. Badly, toward the end, but he ran it. He cleared his personal accounts, resigned from the board, and moved to Fiji.”
“Fiji?” I say, because I don’t know what else to say to a man telling you his father abandoned him for an island.
“Fiji.”
“Who ran the company after he left?”
“I did. I was twenty-three. The board fought me for six months and then stopped fighting because I made them money.”
I shake my head. “All that at twenty-three?”
“I was twenty-four by the time they accepted me. I was also very angry, and anger turns out to be an excellent motivator when you have something to prove to a room full of men who watched your father walk out.” He says it lightly, as though he’s telling a story about someone else.
I know better. “Did anyone help you?”